Volora Sings Mongo Santa Maria Afro Blue
Mongo Santamaria first recorded his composition "Afro Blue" in 1959

AFRO BLUE

You
"You Don't Know What Love Is," a popular song of the Great American Songbook, was written by Don Raye (lyrics) and Gene de Paul (music) for the Abbott and Costello 1941 Universal picture Keep 'Em Flying, in which it was sung by Carol Bruce. The number was deleted prior to release.

Universal ended putting the song into the Raye/de Paul score of one of its B musicals, the 60-minute Behind the Eight Ball (1942), starring the Ritz Brothers and re-teaming Carol Bruce and Dick Foran from "Keep 'Em Flying." Here, "You Don't Know What Love Is" was again sung by Carol Bruce, in her third and final film until the 1980's. Bruce would find her greatest success on Broadway.

From such curious beginnings as an outtake in an A picture and an introduction in a B, both by the same singer, no one could have predicted that in later years the song would emerge as a masterpiece--a jazz standard to be recorded several hundreds of times, starting when Miles Davis and other jazz musicians began recording and playing the song in the 1950s.

The song also appears on the soundtrack to the film The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999

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